“Someone once claimed that conclusions in the Social Sciences [sic] were of two kinds: 1. Obvious; 2. wrong.”

LMAO!

Nate

Ah, the power of big words.

Cinlef

In fairness studies occasionally reveal that what seems likely to be the blindingly obvious conclusion is in fact not true (the example par excellence is probably Milgram’s studies on obedience to authority,)

There is also the problem of whether the events observed in the studies actually had the meanings that the researcher read into them. In deception studies of this sort, the student-participants are likely to suspect a deception and play along with the gag. In particular, they may realize quite well that state law would prohibit the professor from actually harming anyone with electrical shocks. They may suppose that the amount of current is for that matter not actually harmful. (These are psych students, not electrical engineers, physicists, or doctors.) IOW, that some of the students went ahead with the shocks may have nothing to do with “obedience to authority” and may have no predictive power regarding a) adults and other non-college students engaged with b) real world situations.http://faculty.babson.edu/krollag/org_site/soc_psych/orne_crit_milgram.html

Mark S (not for Shea)

It’s always fascinated me how fields like psychology and sociology, which claim to study human beings (a truly fascinating subject), always manage to produce the most boring, mind-numbing prose on the planet.

If you ever want to pull a Salieri and drive someone to suicide, just force them to read the thesis of any Psychology grad student, or any published paper for a sociology conference. There is no surer way to convince a human being to staple their own eyelids shut and run screaming into rush hour traffic.

Sue Sims

It’s worthwhile, if you haven’t done so, checking out William Briggs’ website – that’s where Mike Flynn got this from originally. Briggs is an excellent (and amusing) debunker of all those ghastly pieces of ‘research’ which ‘prove’ that Christians are all stupid, fascist, fat, or whatever.